Letter To A Hero
by Anime Girl23
Summary: Long before John was born, that day had a special meaning to Ricky. It was the night he met Jason Gideon. Amy's about to find that out. Ricky/Amy


Hi, everyone! Okay, so I'm back with another Secret Life fanfic, only this time, it crosses with Criminal Minds. I wrote this as a birthday gift to my lovely Kyra, so I hope she likes it!

**Note:** This is written so that people that don't know Criminal Minds can read it, so if you haven't seen the show, you should be fine. The only character from Criminal Minds that is really used is Jason Gideon.

Disclaimer: I don't own Secret Life, nor Criminal Minds. Both belong to their respective owners. I'm making no profit from this.

Letter To A Hero  
One-Shot

A crash resonated through the apartment, startling John into a few soft cries as his father lifted him into his arms. Ricky bounced him, shushing the small boy quietly as he came out of the bedroom and saw Amy on her hands and knees, picking up the fallen papers and pens.

"Sorry. I didn't realize how close I was to the desk until I-"

"It's fine." Ricky shook his head, lowering John into his playpen. "Need a hand?"

"I got it," she said, stretching to reach for a pen that had its cap almost entirely chewed up—not by John, by Ricky; he gnaws when he thinks—and kept a stack of magazines pressed to her chest. Her hand fell to the floor and she glared up at Ricky halfheartedly as he twirled the pen between his fingers. "I said I got it."

Ricky just smirked at her, going down onto his knees.

Amy rolled her eyes, reaching for another sheet of paper. She tossed it on top of the magazines and reached for another pen before she paused. The paper was a handwritten letter, almost completely filled with what she knew was Ricky's neat-yet-slanted scrawl. She moved her eyes away from it, looking to the floor as she slid it from her pile and towards him. This letter was his business. She wasn't going to violate his privacy.

Ricky looked at her strangely for a second before his eyes fell on the sheet. He cleared his throat, uncomfortable for a moment as he took it, and she watched through her bangs as he opened one of the drawers, ready to slide it inside and out of sight. Her brows furrowed, watching as he paused and pulled the paper back to him, his eyes looking between her and the letter. He bit his lip, nodding to himself a bit as he shut the drawer, paper still in hand, and shifted so that he was leaning against the wall.

"I write him something every year," he said, sounding a bit unsure of himself as he patted the spot beside him once. She only waited a second before leaving her pile on the floor, still neatly stacked as she crawled over. "It used to be every day back when I was first put in foster care. Something to keep me sane while the trial was going on and I got moved between boys' homes and foster families. Over time it just...changed. Turned into one a week, one a month, now it's three times a year; one on my birthday, Christmas, and today."

"John's birthday?" she asked softly, almost afraid that he'd stop if she butt in too much.

"It's not just John's birthday for me. It's...the day I got out." He watched as her eyes widened, nodding at nothing. "I was twelve when I was placed in the system and he," he lifted the paper, "is the reason why."

Amy nodded, not really thinking there were any words to say. She didn't know the details about when Ricky was in foster care or his life before that. Before just then, she had no idea how long he'd been with his biological parents—she didn't say real, because no real parent would ever do that to their child—and she'd always been too shy to ask. They shared a child together, but she'd never felt like it was her place to make him open up about what, she was sure, were painful memories.

Part of her was dying to ask, questions halfway up her throat, but she swallowed them back, just watching as Ricky's fingers played with the edges of the paper before he handed it over to her. She stared at him, silently asking if he was sure, and he smiled at her.

"I think my father knew that he was going to get caught," he said, eyes looking a bit far away as he thought back. "He pulled me out of school one day, dragged me out and into the car, and...he just drove. He kept saying that they weren't going to take me away, that they had no right, that I was going to pay for telling lies. He knew they weren't lies, but..." he sighed, "I don't know.

"He drove for hours before we got to this building...I remember being scared that it was going to fall down around us. It was a wreck, but he kept us there for four days before they found us."

"They?" she whispered before clenching her jaw shut.

"The FBI," he smiled softly, amused, when her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. "The teacher I told, he knew their media liaison, JJ. He called her when I disappeared and they pulled some strings, got the cops in my hometown to request help from the BAU...sorry, Behavioral Analysis Unit. They flew out from Quantico, profiled my dad to figure out where he took me."

His face went dark and he looked down, picking at his nails. She reached out and took his hand before she could stop herself, more than a bit surprised when he didn't pull away. He squeezed, almost waiting for her returning grip before he spoke again.

"When they found us...he'd beaten me half to death. I remember him shouting at me that good boys don't lie and asking why I'd say all that about him, didn't I know that he loved me. The team got him out of there and I was in the corner.

"I was barely even conscious when he came over and...he put his coat around me, said his name was Jason Gideon and that I was safe, that... He said that my dad couldn't hurt me anymore. I was twelve and he picked me up like I was just a little kid, carried me out to the ambulance and rode with me to the hospital. It was the first time I'd ever actually felt safe.

"I can't let go of it. What he...what he and his entire team did," his eyes turned to her, brown locked with green, "If they hadn't found me when they did...I know I would have died."

Tears sprang to her eyes at that, mind running wild as it created images of what her life would be right now if she'd never met Ricky, if she'd never had John. Those ideas brought a pain to her chest and she hugged him. She felt him stiffen, only for a second, though, before he returned the embrace, one of his hands buried in her hair as she pressed her face into his neck.

She didn't have to say that she was glad—no, _completely freaking thankful_—that they found him. He knew.

They sat like that for a long while before they broke apart, both a little teary-eyed. Amy stayed pressed against his side, one of his arms wrapped around her shoulders. His fingers played with the hair behind her left ear, sending a tingle down her spine as she sniffed and turned her eyes to the letter.

_Agent Gideon,_

_I know I've said it time and time again, but it can't be said enough._

_Thank you._

_I know where I'd be right now if you and your team hadn't found me that day and I know that if you hadn't, I wouldn't have what I do now._

_I've told you about John. He's a year old today and keeps getting more perfect. I could never have asked for something like this, never even thought it was possible, but I have it right here._

_I've told him about you, a little bedtime story about the hero sweeping in to save the lost boy just before the dragon got him. I'll tell him that story every night, because every little boy needs a hero and I want him to remember that they are out there. I don't know if I'll ever find the strength to tell him the real story, to tell him everything I came from, but I also want him to understand why his father chose what he did._

_I did finally make that decision. I graduate next year and when I do, I'll be going into Criminal Justice. There's no doubt in my mind that I want to be a profiler. I know that I can never truly thank you for what you did, but I want to be able to help people like you have. No one should ever have to live like I did and I want to be a hero to my son, someone to take away the monsters under his bed. I want to be able to tell him that Daddy caught the bad guy._

_Every day I can be a good father to him, I feel like I become a better man. I know now that I'm not my father and that I don't need him. I have a family now and I know now that family isn't limited to the people related to you by blood. My foster parents are my real mom and dad. I've got them and I have Amy and John. My family are the ones that I chose, the ones that I'd protect with my life and if I'd never met you and your team, I never would have found them._

_I can never thank you enough._

_--Ricky_

Amy blinked back tears, wiping a damp cheek against Ricky's t-shirt sleeve. She pulled away from him, just long enough to reach for a pen before she added her own message to the very bottom.

_Agent Gideon,_

_Thank you. Because of you, I have something that I can't imagine my life without._

_--Amy Juergens_

Ricky stared at her, a mix of shocked and touched that shifted to confusion as she held a finger up and rose to her feet.

"One second," she said before rushing into the bathroom. He heard the water turn on for a minute before she came back, face looking a bit damp, but less red from tears. His eyes followed her, watching as she dug in her bag until she found her camera, slipping her hand through the loop and letting it hang from the crook of her elbow as she lifted John from the playpen and brought him back over. She kneeled back beside him, placing John in between.

"Wanna send him a picture?"

A smile broke out on Ricky's face and he gave her a loose hug, whispering a _yes_ into her hair before he pulled back and looked down at John. "Wanna take a picture, buddy?"

John giggled, head bending back as he stared up at both his parents, eyes wide, and watched Amy power the camera on. The little device sprang to life.

They snapped picture after picture before Amy took a chance and kissed Ricky's cheek mid-flash. She pulled back, blushing a dark red as he stared at her, shock clear on his face.

"I...I don't know why I-"

She didn't get any further than that, all speech cut off when Ricky's lips came over hers. It was different than the kiss in her bedroom. This kiss, there wasn't any lingering guilt that she was kissing a taken man. This one just felt...right. It didn't go as far as the last one. There were no probing tongues or bodies pressed together, temperatures rising so much that she thought she'd faint. The heat was there, spreading throughout her body while one of her hands grasped his t-shirt in a vice grip.

She blinked up at him, dazed when they finally broke apart. Both their faces were flushed, eyes unable to break contact as his shirt stayed fisted in her hand and her hair remained tangled in his fingers. Their other hands lay intertwined around John's body, holding him and their little family together.

Jason Gideon gently tore the envelope open, a hint of a smile on his face as he pulled out the letter. His eyes widened for a fraction of a second as the printed photo fell from the folded paper and to his desk. He picked it up, flipped it over, and let the smile become a bit more pronounced as he stared at the matured, yet familiar face of Ricky Underwood.

He read the letter, holding the plain stationary with one hand while the other held the photo, thumb stroking the glossed paper. His eyes returned to the image when he finished, staring at the family that Ricky had been able to make.

Two smiling faces stared back at him, one of a girl no more than sixteen, the other of a boy that he never forgot. The cuts and bruises on Ricky's face had long since healed, save for the small scar below his right eye. A replica of Ricky's eyes stared up and to the side in the photo, but instead of Ricky's dark hair, a softer brown—the same color as Amy's—sat atop the tiny head of their son.

This was why he did this job, to give people like Ricky a chance to live their lives. He still remembered that day, the too-thin boy, bloodied and bruised in the corner of the room. He could hear Bob Underwood shouting as he was put in cuffs, but it had been white noise to him as he carefully stepped toward the child. Ricky had tried to scramble away from him, scared, but he hadn't had the strength. No food and the amount of beatings—right then, Gideon didn't even want to think about what else Underwood had done to him—had left him as nothing more than a broken figure, brown eyes staring at him, half terrified, half asking to die.

It still made him sick that someone so young had been able to feel like that. No matter how many times he worked with abused kids, that sickness would never go away.

He could still remember the lingering thought that Ricky weighed much too little as he lifted him into his arms, the small body wrapped in his FBI windbreaker. Ricky had been shivering, even in the warm California weather, he'd been shivering.

He folded the letter carefully back into the envelope and slipped it into his bag. Once he got home, he'd put it with the other ones Ricky had sent him. The photo stayed on his desk as he reached for a pen, carefully writing the date on the back before he flipped it back over. His eyes rose up, staring across the room and to the collection of photos sitting atop the bureau, each one of those faces belonging to people he'd helped to save, people that got another chance at life. The top was crowded, most pictures hidden behind one another but he could still spot Ricky's school picture from years ago. There was just enough room beside it for one more.

Gideon looked between Ricky Underwood, then and now, before he stood.

He had just the frame for this.

The End

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